"I haven"t seen the house yet," says I, not half pacified.
"Of course not--how can you, till we get there?"
Cousin Dempster walked on, and, of course, I had to follow.
"Wait one minute," says I, "while I look at this great round picture overhead. What on earth is it all about? The women up there look mighty unsafe. Now, what room is this, with its roof in the sky, and its floor solid stone?"
"It is the rotunda," says he; "the national pictures are all around you, but we haven"t time to look at them now--some other day."
I couldn"t help looking back, for such a room I never saw in my born days. It was like a stone park roofed in so high up that the pictured women overhead seemed perched among the clouds. Over them the light came pouring like water down a cataract, filling the broad s.p.a.ce below as if it had been all out of doors.
But I had no time to see more, for Cousin Dempster led me through a hallway and into another round room, except at one end, where a gallery ran straight across and then curved around the whole room, hooping it in like a horseshoe. In front of the straight gallery ran a row of stone pillars--tall, large, and shiny as gla.s.s--spotted, too, like the leopards in a show, and towering up like the pillars in Solomon"s Temple, which the Queen of Sheba travelled so far to examine. The idea that she took all that trouble to get acquainted with Solomon, is just ridiculous. Why, it would have taken the hymeneal monarch a whole lifetime to have introduced her to his family in a decorous way.
Besides, if he provided for his own household out of the government, only think how busy he must have been in finding places for the relations of all his wives! No doubt he let the Queen of Sheba see his Temple, and left her to be entertained by two or three hundred of his wives. Not being a ladies" man, what more could he do?
Well, as Cousin Dempster says, I do sometimes let my pen run away with me; but when it turns toward the Scriptural history of my s.e.x, I let it run.
XLV.
RANDOLPH ROGERS" BRONZE DOORS.
"Well," says I to Cousin D., "what room do you call this?"
"Oh, this is the old House," says he.
The old house! Sisters, there are times when I think Dempster is beside himself. I did not deign to answer him, except with a look that would have stopped the sap running from a young maple in the brightest April day you ever saw. He didn"t seem to mind it, though, but went on as if I hadn"t pierced him with my eyes.
"These doors," says he, swinging back the half of a door that seemed to be made of bra.s.s and gold and powdered green-stone pounded together, and cut into the most lovely pictures that you ever set eyes on--"these doors open to the new House. They are by Rogers, and cost thirty thousand dollars."
"Thirty thousand dollars for these two doors, Cousin Dempster! I have just been a-wondering if you were crazy, and now I know you are."
"Upon my word," says he, "that is just what they cost."
"What! thirty thousand dollars?"
"Thirty thousand dollars."
I bent forward, and looked at the door--close. It was sunk deep into squares, and each square had a picture of men and women that seemed to be busy at something.
"What is it all about?" says I.
"Every picture is taken from something connected with the history of our country," says he.
"You don"t say so," says I. "Who did you say made them all?"
"Mr. Rogers, a sculptor from Ohio. One of the great geniuses of the age, and one of the finest fellows that ever breathed."
"Do you know him?" says I.
"Yes," says he. "I got acquainted with him in Florence, years ago, when Elizabeth and I went to Europe on our wedding trip. He was then a rising man, hard at work on the art that he has since done much to enn.o.ble. I am glad to see his great genius embodied here, where it will live as long as the marble on the walls. The country has honored itself in this almost as much as it has disgraced itself in placing some of the vilest attempts that ever parodied art in conspicuous places here."
Cousin Dempster"s face turned red as he spoke--red with shame, I could see.
"It is enough to make an American, who understands what real art is, ashamed of his country," says he.
"But what do they do it for?" says I.
"Because two-thirds of the members sent here do not know a picture from a handsaw! but impudence can persuade, and ignorance can vote. Why, I once heard a Member of Congress speak of the statues in the Vatican as coa.r.s.e and clumsy compared with the attempts of a female woman who could not, out of her own talent, have moulded an apple-dumpling into roundness."
Cousin Dempster had got into dead earnest now. He knew what he was talking about, and I couldn"t help feeling for him.
"Some day, Cousin Phmie," says he, "I will take you round and show you the abominations which have been set up in this building--a disgrace both to the taste and integrity of the nation. You will understand the impudent pretension for which our people have been taxed in order that the National Capitol may be made a laughing-stock for foreigners, and those Americans who are compelled to blush for what they cannot help."
"Cousin Dempster," says I, "why don"t the press take these things up and expose them?"
"That is exactly what I want," says he. "It is for that very purpose I want you to go around among these distorted marbles and things. Your Reports may do some good."
"But I don"t quite understand them myself," says I, blushing a little.
"Trust genius to discover genius," says he. "You could not fail to see faults or merits where they existed. All the arts are kindred. Poetry, painting, sculpture, go hand-in-hand. You understood the beauty that lies in these doors at a glance."
"One must be blind not to see that," says I.
"Of course; well, cousin, we will give a day to these things before we go home; but now, hurry forward, or we shall be too late to see the House open."
"Just as if there was a house in all Washington that wouldn"t open for us if we chose to knock or ring," I thought to myself, but said nothing, for Dempster was walking off like a steam-engine, and I followed down one long hall, and up another--all paved with bright-colored stones--till it seemed as if I were walking over a rock carpet.
XLVI.
WAS IT A MEETING-HOUSE?
Dear sisters:--At last we came to some wide marble stairs, with a twist in the middle, and they led us into another long hall with a stone carpet, out of which some doors covered with cloth were opening and shutting all the time for folks to go through.
Cousin Dempster swung one open for me, and I went into what looked like a meeting-house gallery, with long seats a-running all around it, cushioned off with red velvet, or something. Right over what seemed to be the pulpit, was a square gallery by itself, which I took for the singers" seats, but it was full of men--not a female among them--and they all seemed busy as bees laying out their music for use.
Cousin E. E. was sitting near this gallery. She beckoned to me, so I went in. I sat down by her and whispered:
"I didn"t know we were coming to a meeting. Dempster never said a word about it."
"Hush!" says she. "The chaplain is going to pray."